Starting and Running a campaign is a lot easier if there’s a clearly understood process that maximizes the opportunities for success and avoids the largest traps and pitfalls.

Image by beate bachmann (spirit111) from Pixabay

As usual, I worked on the next part of Trade In Fantasy until it became clear that it wasn’t quite going to be ready in time, then shifted gears. This article was originally intended to be the next time-out entry in the sequence, but it’s been preempted by the need to have something ready to publish in short order. In fact, it’s likely that I will have so much to say on the subject of today’s post that I will split it in two.

Inspiration

Today’s article was inspired by an article at EnWorld by Charles Dunwoody – a shout-out to him – entitled “Joyful GMing: RPG Success Strategies”. Overall, it seemed a solid enough article, if a little on the shallow end at times – but then, most blogs are, compared to the standards set for Campaign Mastery.

At it’s heart is a process for successful GMing which Charles polished and slip-streamed into a very simple workflow.

As I read the article, my first thought was that it really needed a flowchart to pull it all together, so I started to sketch one out, finding as I did so that I had something to say about each of the stages. The flowchart that you can see on the right was the result.

It’s nice, neat, and simple, and at the time, that was the full intention of this article – to supplement Charles’ article with my own advice.

But, as I started contemplating what that advice would be, part of it was that ‘this step really should be subdivided this way’ or ‘there’s something that’s been left out, here’. I found myself thinking, in the end, that the process may have been over-simplified, that there was room for some solid advice that would not fit the simpler structure.

Revision

So my first step was to revise the process and the flowchart by the inversion of steps 1 and 2 and the addition of steps 2a and 5a. Steps 9 and 10 followed, and then step 6 got subdivided into 5 sub-steps in a third wave of revisions. And, by now – as you can see to the left, the result didn’t look very much like the process described by Charles at all.

Make no mistake though – his original is still at the conceptual heart of things. I’ve just added a few things and complicated some others.

This flowchart is your road map to today’s article, your table of contents if you will. You don’t really need it to read and use the content, but it helps put the process into context.

I’m also going to do my best not to repeat Charles’ advice; his article is still relevant and it might even be useful to read it before continuing. So here’s that link again (opens in a new tab).

0. Start

Some people struggle with this step. A lack of confidence saps their willingness to accept the responsibility and workload. I can sympathize with that; there have been times when I was caught in a time-crunch by the real world and didn’t think I could spare the time / effort / creativity to run another campaign – and even had to put existing campaigns on hold, for a while.

But there’s a big difference between not having enough time and not having enough ability.

No GM starts with the complete skill-set that they need to run a successful campaign. It’s like a degree in computer science – from the moment the still-wet ink gets deposited on the page, your skills start to atrophy, and the world around you starts to evolve to date what you know. You can combat the first by actively using everything that’s relevant from what you’ve learned (and occasionally casting a refresher glance over the rest); to combat the second, you need to self-educate. Regularly and frequently, even constantly.

GMing is a little more forgiving, but when you are starting out, there will be mountains to climb. Fortunately, there are many sherpas out there to guide you, and none of the mountains is as forbidding as they seem.

It does help if your players have a similar level of experience to your own – they will be more forgiving of any lapses if they can’t do any better. It can also be helpful in the long run if your players are more experienced than you are – for a while, they may ride roughshod over your efforts (and that can be fun for them), but you will learn more quickly be being thrown in the deep end.

The biggest danger comes from having players with significantly less experience than you have – because they will be looking to you for guidance, and things can devolve into the blind leading the blind. Nevertheless, that is going to happen from time to time – and, when it does, your duty is clear: throw them in the deep end, but be prepared to guide them out if absolutely necessary. This sharpens their learning curve, just as experienced players do yours – but that only accelerates them getting ‘up to speed’. The one essential is for them to know that the GM has their back.

Of course, the time will come when you need to start loosening the apron-strings and letting the players sink or swim on their own. How much to pull back, and when, are as much a part of your campaign planning as anything else – or should be.

One technique that’s especially useful is to supplement the PCs with an NPC member of the team. This lets you speak to the players through that NPC, offering suggestions, demonstrating the right way to role-play, and so on. Don’t play this NPC as-written, at least at first; it’s a mouthpiece for you to use to get the PCs out of trouble, or headed in the right direction when they grow lost or confused. As the players become more experienced, you will naturally start adopting a harder line in terms of the character-as-written because the players will be less reliant on the outside input and advice. If you want to (there’s no real need), you can even mark ‘graduation day’ by killing off the NPC, symbolically telling the players “‘you’re on your own, now”.

One trap that I have seen multiple new (potential) GMs fall into is judging themselves by the standards set by more experienced GMs. I’ve lost track of the number of times someone has reached out to me to say “I thought I was ready to GM but I don’t understand half of the advice that you offer on Campaign Mastery” – I rarely write these articles for beginners; they are aimed at experienced GMs and poke into all sorts of nooks and crannies within the art. Some of the resulting advice will be useful to a particular GM, and some of it won’t be. My advice is always, bookmark anything that doesn’t make sense and come back to it a year or so later; eventually, your skills will grow to the point where you can make an informed and educated decision about the usefulness of what’s offered. Until then, if you don’t understand it, ignore it.

The same practice should be applied by beginner GMs to every experienced GM they encounter. Those experienced GMs will be able to do things that you can’t, and will do things that you might not – before you can take any lessons from them, you need to understand not only what they are doing, and how they are doing it, but why they are doing it. Only then can you judge whether or not it’s a practice that you should attempt to emulate. Don’t expect to run before you can crawl – design your campaigns and adventures with your own limitations in mind, while carefully pushing yourself to improve, and that’s all that anyone can ask or expect of you.

One final piece of advice before I move on – it’s okay to compromise on ideals and standards of GMing if you have to. Don’t expect to have all the answers, and do expect to have to diverge from your prepared plans when the players do something unexpected or expose a shortcoming in those plans. If you don’t have time to do everything that you would ideally like to do, have a plan B and execute it. If that compromises your prep, so be it. GM over-commitment is a mistake that we all make from time to time. It’s more important, most times, to deliver something playable than to dot every i and cross every t.

1. Campaign Concept

The campaign concept is the central idea at the heart of the campaign, painted in the broadest possible strokes. It focuses on what will make this campaign different from the one run by Joe Bloggs down the street. It’s the conceptual cornerstone that should inspire everything else.

As GMs grow in experience, they will often invert the sequence of Charles’ original steps 1 and 2 – they will have an idea for a campaign and then choose a game system that seems to suit it. Beginners tend to do it in the sequence he describes, in which they have a rules system and devise a campaign to fit into it.

The reason for the change is that the rules system inherently constrains the campaign concepts. If those constraints simply reinforce the intentions of the campaign, they are an advantage, not a liability; but when that isn’t the case, an alternative game system may be a better fit.

My first Fumanor campaign was designed and intended to be an AD&D campaign. The players persuaded me to make it a 2nd Ed campaign, but the differences between system and expectations grew until they became intolerable. So I converted it to Rolemaster, trying to put a little more grit into the mechanics. That didn’t work very well, and didn’t last very long. Finally, we adopted D&D 3.0 (and later, 3.5) and never looked back; it had the right balance between rules crunch and fantasy, between PCs and capabilities, at least for my taste. Your mileage, of course, may vary.

2. Choose Rules / 2a. House Rules

No rules system adapts perfectly to suit a campaign concept. There is, in modern times, a movement to running games with RAW – “Rules As Written”. I come from the old school, where if a rule didn’t work for any reason, changing it was not only acceptable but best practice.

I’m not going to dig into that particular debate; suffice it to say that both approaches have their benefits and their drawbacks. Instead, let’s talk about bad house rules for a minute.

Just because you can change something, doesn’t mean that you should. Yes, a revised rule might better implement your vision of the campaign, but that alone isn’t always enough to justify changing it; the rest fall into the category of other consequences. Before you can change a rule, you need to understand why the rule is as it appears, and why it will be advantageous to change it, and whether or not there are alternatives to consider, and what the ramifications and consequences outside of the purpose of the change are going to be. Only then can you determine whether or not the price is worth paying.

In the bad old days, GMs rarely made such detailed assessments. “I want X” was justification enough – and, as a result, some truly appalling rules were foisted onto players and campaigns.

Sometimes, even doing all that analysis isn’t enough – see the Woes Of Piety & Magic article published way back when under the heading of Greatest GMing Mistakes. In the case of the Piety system, the intentions were both noble and respectable, and the implementation seemed like a good idea at the time. Suffice it to say that it bogged everything down, it broke game balance, and it didn’t achieve it’s intended goals.

Not all house rules are like that. Most fall into two categories: rules that cover areas that the RAW overlooked, and rules that change the way the RAW function within the campaign context. The first are always easier to justify than the latter, but both have their place.

I remain perfectly happy to change the rules if I deem the change necessary. I’m just a little more cautious about what changes I make. They exist to better fit the game system to the campaign, and to patch holes in the RAW.

3. Campaign Overview

A campaign overview is a brief synopsis of what is going to make the campaign different / unique. It’s a hook, a broad breakdown of the how the central concepts of the campaign will be introduced to the players and how they will make a difference to the story of the campaign. It’s the bait with which you lure potential players into playing it.

In effect, it is a summary of what you expect to occur within the campaign, in general terms.

Every house rule that doesn’t simply patch a hole or problem within the game mechanics needs to be highlighted in the campaign overview – there needs to be an element of the campaign that does nothing but bring the central tenets of the campaign to the players’ attention and show how they will impact the overall story.

A lot of GMs skip the campaign overview stage, and that’s never a good idea. Even where you expect the campaign to be responsive to player choices and demands, you need an overview to place what the players want to do into context, and to restrict players choices where they do not fit the campaign concept.

There are two basic approaches to campaign overviews: the PC-driven and the Existential.

In a PC-driven overview, the GM is committing to arranging in-campaign circumstances that will force or require the PCs to achieve certain things, which will mitigate or undo those circumstances. This forces them to earn their player agency, starting with small amounts at the beginning of the campaign and ending with near-total agency at the end. This type of structure works very well when PCs present at the table with goals or motivations spelt out, as for example in a superhero campaign. All the GM has to do is find a way to conflate each PC’s goals with the bigger campaign picture.

My superhero campaign is a PC-driven one; there are multiple plot threads running concurrently. At least one, and often several, for each PC, at least one for some significant NPCs that will affect the PCs, at least one that will reshape / is reshaping the campaign world, at least one for a major organization, and even a couple that revolve around enemies of the group. Not all of these advance at once; everything is geared at building to a crescendo – in 10-15 years. My Dr Who campaign is another example.

In an Existential campaign, the PCs don’t even get mentioned in the campaign overview; instead, it’s all about the world around them and how it is going to change (unless, perhaps, something is done to stop this from happening). These events provide context and boundaries for whatever the players want to do; there is no expectation that the PCs will solve all the world’s problems, only that they will seek to survive and advance themselves in the face of whatever challenges get thrown in their way.

The Adventurer’s Club campaign is an existential one. We know how we have reshaped world history, we know how we have reshaped the world history that is yet to unfold, and we know how that will affect the parent and titular name of the organization to which the PCs belong. Those things all happen in the background, occasionally providing flavor and context, but generally not playing a pivotal role in the adventures themselves, which tend to be more standalone affairs.

Both approaches work; the key difference lies in what the GM expects from PCs in the campaign, and hence what they expect from players. This has to be spelt out in no uncertain terms as part of the initial briefing for potential players.

4. Attract Players

There are three ways of grouping potential players – open, closed, and a hybrid of the two.

The Open approach means that there are lots of potential players out there and you only have to make the existence of the forthcoming campaign known to attract some of them. Advertising a campaign on a University noticeboard or a Facebook group, for example, or at a games store.

The Closed approach means that you already have contact with a group of players and are trying to devise a campaign that will appeal to them.

The Hybrid approach means that there are one or two specific pre-selected players that you want to satisfy / attract, but that you are openly advertising for others to adventure alongside them.

There are significant ramifications to the different options. The closed and hybrid approach mean that if your campaign concept doesn’t appeal, you have to set it aside and start over. The friends with whom I game have no interest in a Star Trek -based RPG for example, and only one of them is really into Doctor Who. But I could count on at least two of them and maybe three or all four if I came up with a Babylon-5 based campaign. The structure and content of the campaign are dictated by the preferences of the players.

An open campaign, on the other hand, operates on the “Build It And They Will Come” principle. Your proposed campaign might only appeal to 1 in 1000 gamers, but you only need 3-5 of them – so if there are 3-5,000 players who learn of it’s proposed existence, all will be well. The more popular your campaign concept is, i.e. the broader its appeal, the more easily you will attract players – and the more of them you may have to turn away for lack of space.

When do you propose playing? The majority of my games happen on a Saturday because that’s when people are neither working nor studying. I used to belong to another group that gathered on Friday Nights and the occasional long weekend. I know of two groups – one meeting on a Friday and one on a Tuesday – because that’s when the players are available. I used to run regular but occasional games on Sundays as supplementary to the Saturday game sessions.

With a closed or hybrid model, you are already constrained in terms of when, but you probably already know what those restrictions are. Players joining up will have to be available at times that suit. With the open and hybrid models, any restriction of time also restricts the compatibility of possible players and campaign. Pick an unpopular day and time because it suits you and you may find that you attract no player interest.

Picking a popular time can also be problematic, as potential players are more likely to already have a game to go to!

Ultimately, attracting players is an exercise in Marketing. That means that there are a number of stages to the process, and you need a plan for each of them. These are: Awareness, Appeal, T’s & Cs, and Responsiveness.

Awareness: Before someone can consider becoming a player in the proposed campaign, they need to know that it exists. The more places you advertise its existence, the broader the potential pool of players – but the better you focus you advertising presence, the less effort you will waste on those who will never be interested. For about $5 a week, I can sponsor a radio show on local community radio; this produces advertising that will reach thousands upon thousands of listeners – but most of them won’t be gamers. Placing an advert on a noticeboard at my local library will only be seen by a few hundred people, but there will be a slightly higher response rate because there’s already a gaming group that meets there regularly. Placing an advert on a noticeboard at the local games store may also only be seen by a few hundred people a week – but they will all be gamers, and they will all know other gamers.

Appeal: Once a gamer knows that the campaign exists, the next thing that has to happen is that it has to appeal to them. That means describing it in an accurate but appealing way and in a way that can be comprehended in a very short space of time. People don’t have time to, and won’t, read an entire paragraph. You’re lucky if you can get them to read a full sentence and not a sound bite. My best advice: think like a spammer. Yeah, you heard me right. Construct a clickbait headline that will attract people strongly enough that they will then read a slightly longer descriptive passage of the proposed campaign. I would also direct your attention to the Secrets Of Stylish Narrative series, which is all about compressing text to make it shorter and more comprehensible while not skimping on the flavor. And practice – lots of practice.

T’s & C’s: I don’t know if this term has gone as viral in advertising elsewhere as it has here in Australia. It stands for “Terms and Conditions” – but only takes half as long to say, and is generally something that people can figure out from context even if they’ve never heard it before. In terms of your advertising for players, it means specifying where and when play is proposed, and what level of flexibility there is. There may be other restrictions like “No Power Gamers”, or “University students / graduates preferred”. Finally, a content guideline is probably appropriate – “G” or “NRC” or “Mature Concepts” or even “Occasionally Explicit Language Tolerated”. The goal is to avoid wasting your time and the time of a prospective player.

Responsiveness: Finally, a call to action – while making that action as easy as possible for the prospective player to complete. You don’t have to go as far as “Scan this QR Code to phone the GM” – but the easier it is to respond, the better. But there is a downside – this information is going to be open to the public, and that means open to potential abuse. I don’t know that you need to go as far as a burner phone, but using a disposable email address might prevent a LOT of grief.

5. Character Generation

So you’ve attracted a group of players who are willing to at least give the campaign a go. If you’re exceedingly lucky, you may even have a standby list to back them up. You’ve gathered them together for the purposes of character generation. Which means they need a more extensive campaign briefing in order to make good choices for their characters. I’m a big believer in collaborative concept selection – for example, when generating characters for the Zenith-3 campaign, I specified six or seven broad categories of PC archetype – the equivalent of character classes & race – and let the players choose in sequence of them signing up for the campaign. That didn’t prohibit two of them choosing the same thing, but it encouraged them to pick a slot that hadn’t been filled on the team – and, since there were more slots than players, they collectively decided what parts of the campaign they were going to find more challenging.

There are two different approaches to character generation – all together, or individually / piecemeal. “All together” means everyone at the same time and the same place. “Individually / piecemeal” means one-on-one sessions with the GM. The second is more realistic in that the PCs will have no knowledge of each other; the first ensures that there are no secrets between the PCs.

Under certain circumstances, there is also a lot to commend in adopting a hybrid approach – a trusted, pre-selected, player who knows both the game system and your campaign style can be a lifesaver if the other players don’t know the rules, acting as an assistant GM. But you need to be able to trust them implicitly because they will be generating their PC separately from the others.

The other big advantage of the “all together” approach is that it turns the character generation process into a social occasion. You should play into this, especially if there are players that don’t know each other already.

The GM needs to be on-hand during character generation to answer questions. And, if you are taking the “all together” approach, they should also observe the emerging group dynamic closely. What are the rough spots? Who gets along immediately? How are these personal dynamics likely to affect the way the PCs interact in-game? Are there any red flags that suggest someone may not last as a player in the campaign? Or any black flags that suggest you might need to actually expel someone from the group?

It’s far too early at this point to make any such decisions, but it’s never too early to start watching out for potential unpleasant surprises.

5a. Player Commitment

Another subject that requires thought in advance of the first session – even if that’s only for the purposes of character generation – is an answer to the question “What are you asking the players to commit to?” and the related question, “What are you committing to?”

I ask new players to commit to playing 2-3 sessions before pulling out if they don’t enjoy it, and to give me at least one session’s notice that they will be doing so. At the same time, only a fool doesn’t recognize that circumstances can change, and novices may not have any idea of what sort of time commitments they are actually signing up for. If you expect players to do something in between game sessions, that needs to be spelt out, as well. I commit to giving players a little latitude to modify or tweak their characters for the first few game sessions. I require all players to be friendly toward each other and myself, and to telephone (preferably a day in advance) if for some reason they can’t attend – and commit to making allowances for genuine emergencies and general ill-health.

Some groups have an expectation that they will go together to buy lunch / dinner; others have social contracts like ‘phones off during play’. Some groups demand that people take it in turns to buy drinks or snacks for the group, or that everyone will pitch in to help clean up afterwards.

I know at least one group that permits no-one but the GM to crack open a rulebook other than the player’s book at the game table during play and another that won’t even permit that much.

The variety if social contract that can be found in an RPG group are incredible. As a general rule of thumb, these things are only problems if they aren’t clearly communicated to the participants. That communication is your responsibility, as is the leading of any discussion of what the social contract terms should be within the group.

And with that, I’m about half-way through, and right out of time. To be continued….